Korean product design firm MintPass came up with these great concept designs for real calculators that imitate their software counterparts. [via Boing Boing]

Maker Aki Mimoto wrote in to let us know about his exciting new Arduino/VR/Web app mashup. He's wired up his wife's bike on a stationary platform to an Arduino using a reed sensor. Using the sensor data from the bike, along with data from a head mounted display (HMD), Ari is able to accurately pinpoint his position within Google Street View. Additional data from the HMD allows Ari to look around at his surroundings for a true VR experience.

Pragmatically explained, it means that I don't have to sit in the darkness or stare at my garage door while I'm huffing away. Hopefully once this is done, I'll be able to spend a few nights a week pedalling away downstairs and work my way across the US or Australia over the course of the year.

In the Maker Shed:

Make: Arduino

Want to claim your city as your own? Competing with a rival gang for turf, and want to avoid messy knife fights? Well now you can, thanks to Urban Defender. Working over a short time period, a team of students from Zurich University of Arts built a system to claim buildings by throwing a specially equipped ball at them. Impacts are detected by an accelerometer connected to an Arduino, which is wirelessly connected to a Beagle board which uses a GPS to coordinate the hit to a specific address.

They apparently didn't have time to finish the multi-player version of the game, but I think the concept is too good to let die. Someone should definitely hook this up to the social networking game foursquare. As a bonus, you could use the sensor units to play the actual game four square when you get tired of fighting for turf.

Check out this cool Android-based head mounted display. Andrew Lim of recombu.com used an HTC Magic running Google Street View, safety goggles, and some cardboard to fashion one of the coolest HMD this side of Lawnmowerman. [Thanks, Andrew!]

Phil Clandillon has a cool new video project featuring Google Earth mashups with panoramic images of specific locations relating to the background of the music on the Editors' new album.

After the break is more background info.

Here's an excellent use for a giant LED billboard: a crazy augmented reality installation. The appropriately titled Hands From Above was made by artist Chris O'Shea. Want to create your own? You might run into trouble finding such a nice billboard to use, however the programming environments he used- openFrameworks and openCV - are both freely available. His source code doesn't seem to be available though, unfortunately. [via interactive architecture]

Cartographer's Guild is a thriving online community for folks who are interested in making maps of places that do not exist. There are some really beautiful graphics to be found, particularly, in their Cartographer's Choice forum. Shown at the top of the post is Sapiento's Post Apocalyptic Amerika, and immediately above is töff's Map of Ceres: 16th Millenium.

The fine folks over at Telart have been baking up some special cookies. Instead of worrying about making their cookies look appetizing, they instead focused their efforts on making them look like a fiducial, and then used an augmented reality program to put their logo on top of the cookie.

This is pretty cool by itself, but think of the potential for the technology. Don't like eating your veggies? Pop in the appropriate models, and appease your mom while nomming on delicious cookies. Want to build an obsolescence-proof kids cereal? Make fiducial-o's instead, and let your customers download the latest software when they want to eat them. Forget to make a cake for your significant other's birthday? No issue, just drop down a loaf of bread with one of these markers baked in, and voila! The possibilities are endless.

Check out their instructions to try this at home!

Update: Permissions on the video were updated to allow it to be included above.

This conceptual sensory augmentation device is one of the creepier ones I've seen, I think because it seems to have a mind of it's own. The Miruko wearable eyeball attaches to your body, and continually scans for monsters that only it can see. Once it finds one, you can follow it's gaze to figure out where it is looking. To capture the moment, you pull out your trusty iPhone, which is running an augmented reality program, to finally see the virtual target. For now, it appears to be only looking for monsters, but I'm not sure I would trust it to do that for long. After all, it appears to be a monster itself, and why should it be loyal to us humans? If it starts leading people down dark tunnels, don't say I didn't warn you.

There aren't any build instructions, but do you really want to unleash this kind of thing on the world? Ok, I agree. Anyone know how to build a monster detection sensor?

[via pink tentacle]

Layar, the augmented reality app for the Android platform will be incorporating 3D capabilities into the application in November. They've released a tech preview this week for PICNIC '09 in Amsterdam. The preview, which is available from the Android Market (and only works with-in and around the PICNIC festival) is a significant improvement over flat pins on a map and hopefully encourages people to further investigate the use of augmented reality.

[via androidworld.nl]

Tokyo-based Ubiquitous Entertainment has built the iPhone ARider, a portable head-mounted navigation prototype. It attaches to a standard bike helmet and is capable of delivering visuals via a Scalar Corporation T3-A retractable HMD. With the glut of AR apps hitting the market you'll likely see a lot more HMD projects showing up in the near future. If you know of or are working on an AR physical computing project and would like to share, please leave a comment.

21th Century "Chonmage" ARider [via zikkir]

It's hugely impressive, but the size and complexity of the hardware puts it out of reach for most Makers [please -- someone prove me wrong!]. So, that's why I was attracted to the second half of the video: The students developed an equally impressive augmented reality mode that works without the robot. By using a projector and a camera located above the table, it recognizes the position of balls. As the player moves their pool cue, the system projects the predicted trajectory of the balls right on the table. If you can hit the ball consistently, this could be a great help in visualizing & setting up complicated shots!

See also: Roomba Pool
via waxy

@brady mentions some of the noteworthy tech coming to this year's Burning Man festival in this article over at O'Reilly Radar. Items of interest include local SMS and Burning Man Earth online directory, API, and beta iPhone app.

Burning Man Gets an API (and a Whole Lot More)

Ah, the gay (19)90s: before Y2K, 9/11, Gitmo, CDOs, and all kinds of other depressing modern acronyms. Venture capital fell from the sky like manna, and everyone was getting rich on the Internet, even though nobody knew exactly how. Enter, into that milieu, the following brilliant idea, courtesy of the wunderkinder at MIT's then-ascendant Media Lab: Ping-pong tables ought to contain schools of virtual fish that react to the impact of the ball. The rave toy to end all rave toys!

Pre-coffee sarcasm aside, this really is pretty cool. PingPongPlus is the work of Craig Wisneski, Julian Orbanes, Ben Chun and Professor Hiroshi Ishii. The "fish" mode is only one of several possible interactions, and they all include sound effects. Check out the vid:

Matt Mechtley is responsible for this maker's dream project: getting a classic Nintendo Power Glove to work with custom games by replacing it's brain with an arduino, implanting an accelerometer for motion detection, and using a bluetooth modem for wireless connectivity. He's outdone himself with downloadable code, schematics, this awesome video, and an Instructable to top it off. You may remember Matt from my asphalt mosaics video, or from the many appearances of the video games he works on around the internet. Matt writes:

I always loved the Nintendo Power Glove. Not because it was a fun or useful peripheral -- it wasn't. In fact it wasn't bad, as Lucas asserted, it was absolutely terrible. Only two games were ever made to work with it -- Super Glove Ball and Bad Street Brawler. You could use it with other NES games of course, but it was just an obfuscated controller. Plus, it was horribly imprecise, and since it required a sensor bar to find its orientation, you had to hold your hand at shoulder level all the time. No, I loved the Power Glove for what it represented -- a precursor to virtual reality, a way for humans to directly manipulate computers, like an artifact from some sort of alternate future Earth.

I realized one day that we're actually living in that future. It doesn't look the same as we imagined it, but the necessary elements are all there. It's been 20 years now since Mattel released the Power Glove, in 1989. Especially in the last few years, the availability of sophisticated sensing equipment to hardware hackers has grown by leaps and bounds. Technology like programmable microcontrollers, accelerometers, and Bluetooth are readily available -- and cheap. In short, the time is ripe to re-make the Power Glove -- and make it right.

This is a neat Touchable map via Wired Science. I wonder if Apple has a patent on the multitouch for non-portable applications.

He says it was designed for kids to learn geography, but it appears that the Department of Education was not paying the bill. It's kind of like the interactive LED table from EMS, but way more expensive and militaristic.

The Steven writes in the comments:

You say DIY bride, I think of Helen O'Loy by Lester Del Rey

Well, maybe you haven't heard of ol' Helen O'Loy either. O'Loy sounds a lot like Alloy, doesn't it?

Spoiler Alert: Don't read the wikipedia entry, it gives too much info.

Spoiler-less synopsys:

Dave and Phil are two pals who spend a lot of time together. Although Dave is a robot repairman and Phil is a doctor, they become increasingly interested in building their own robotic housekeeper. Finally they produce "Lena", a housekeeping robot who does a pretty good job of things, but she still lacks the common sense that comes from having emotions. After trying - and failing - with mechanical glands in Lena, they order a high quality Dillard's robot to experiment with. The results are good, but a little bit too real as their new creation, Helen, falls madly in love with one of them.

Maybe you want to read it for yourself, then Google Books is your friend. Or if you want to hold a real atomic version, then you can have that too.

Read any good robofiction lately?

Patty Maes of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab introduces what may be the must have gadget in the not so far future.

The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user's pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user's fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

Thanks Lyle and Susan.

Want to give this system a try? She says it can be made from off the shelf parts for just $350. Post up your ideas in the comments, and show us your stuff in the MAKE Flickr pool.

Nathan sent this tip in via the comments:

"Hangar No. 5": The story of two treasure-hunting teens sneaking into an abandoned military base looking for a rumored gold cache. Once inside, they accidentally activate a top secret relic of the Cold War - a huge mobile weapons system bent on protecting the base from all intruders. Cut off from every exit, the pair must fight to survive.

Running 11 minutes, this live-action short was produced entirely by undergraduate students during fall 2007 and spring 2008. The film contains 110 visual effects shots, all of which were completed by the film's visual effects supervisor using the open-source animation software Blender for all 3D work Apple's Shake compositing software for 2D work.

The varied effects in the film include a fully CG robot, CG set extensions, green screen replacement, extensive rotoscoping, wire removal, 3D camera tracking, image based modeling and lighting, volumetric lighting effects, and particle effects. All CG models,
textures, and other assets were built from the ground up.

Pretty cool video, death dealing robots, racks of automatic weapons, conspiracy, great special effects, mounds of gold bullion, clever story and a cliff hanging ending. For more information, check out the project's site. They set up a funding mechanism where people can contribute to the producers of the film before downloading it.

How do you like working in groups? What is the best thing you have created in school or university? How does a collaborative project help prepare you or your students for life and work in the modern world? How do you plan on funding your projects? How important is money to your projects? What have you or your students created with Blender? Share your thoughts and projects in the comments, and pass along your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

Youtube user Petitblenderman has a great video of a Rubik's Cube solved in a Blender animation.

Danny says this looks reasonably solid. You may remember Danny's laser cut tactile cube post by Collin.

Looks pretty legit to me. The cube's colors are all in the right place, although I was a little confused at about :27 where in the middle of the solution, the cube seems to be scrambled only by half turns (180 degree turns on a face). The rest of the solution is in half turns, which is unusual. It looks good though!

Have you got any clever Rubik's Cube solutions/problems? Have you made something cool with Blender? Join the conversation in the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

Peter writes in the comments about Blender. He and his mates did an independent study to learn Blender, an open source software platform for 3D design and animation. The results of their work is a clever short film titled The Night of the Living Dead Pixels. Their video animation was awarded best short film at the 2007 Suzanne Awards for creating with Blender.

Via email, Peter says of the project:

We (myself, Jere Virta and Jussi Saarelma) are currently fourth-year 3D animation students at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Vantaa, Finland. As part of our degrees we are required to do five months of internship.
About two years ago, towards the end of our second year, we were approached by our lecturer Kristian Simolin (who I by the way happen to know follows the Make blog...), asking whether we wanted to spend the summer months with access to the school computer labs, teach ourselves Blender, create some sort of animation to prove we'd done so, and have it count towards our required internship. The three of us had collaborated on some animation projects before, and found out that we worked well together, so we jumped at the chance.

A really great aspect of their project is that they hit it from so many different angles. Sure, they learned some newfangled software, but they also documented their process. They blogged about the making of the video, telling of their successes and setbacks, they created a website, they posted their work online. When students go through such great effort to tell the story of their project's creation, not only do they learn the skills of the project, they also provide a path into the ideas for the students and teachers who follow them. Their YouTube account has many short segments of their work, showing the evolution of the project.

Peter again:

For our animation we wanted something combining our love for videogames, zombie flicks and offbeat/poor humour. Arriving at a concept we all could agree on was pretty easy.

At that point we had previous experience with using 3ds max, and for this kind of work we found that Blender had no problems standing up to it. It's lightweight (loads in seconds, and even runs off a USB thumbdrive if you want), full of features (even has its own integrated video editor and compositor, in addition to the 3D tools), and once you get past the initial hurdle (which really isn't as steep as some people would have you believe) the user interface lets you work very efficiently. We found the user community great for support, and the fact that you can get more or less directly in touch with the developers to ask about possible bugs and the like is pretty amazing

From their blog:

Jussi, Peter and Jere, three 3D Animation students at Laurea Polytechnic, Vantaa, Finland are doing the internship of their dreams over the summer: Learn the free 3D software Blender, produce a short animation and keep a blog about what spending the summer in a school computer lab feels like.

Peter suggested the forums as a good place to get help on learning Blender.

More from Peter:

In addition to learning to use Blender we learned a lot about project management and the importance of proper planning, mostly through making every possible mistake. :) Originally the script for our animation was much longer, but once we realized how much more time everything was taking compared to what we'd expected, we had to scale back. Night of the Living Dead Pixels is what we had after about three months of work, though. An extra nice touch was when we got an early version of it off to the Blender Conference in Amsterdam, where we won the Best Short Film category at their "Suzanne Awards" festival.

We've since used Blender for other 3D work, both in- and outside of school. At the moment the three of us are working with a Finnish TV channel to produce a series of channel idents, using Blender as our main tool.

What independent projects have you done in school? How is learning independently from and with your classmates a great or troubling way to work in school? How has social media positively impacted your school and learning and teaching? Do your teachers read MAKE? Do your students read MAKE? What can you use Blender for? What do you learn during your vacations? How hard is it to use it as a 3D design tool for digital fabrication? Do you have a great project to show off? Join us in the comments and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

Blender is an open source software project that allows users to create three dimensional objects which can then be rendered into animation sequences and more.

From ~kronick

Does your school use Blender? What great things have you designed with Blender? What is the best way to get started learning Blender? Add your ideas to the comments, and contribute your photos and videos to the MAKE Flickr pool.

Several years ago, I got into playing the gothic sci-fi tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. I nearly bankrupted my family (and I'm only half-kidding), with all of the models, supplies, games books, terrain pieces I bought. I got to the point, like any addict, where I was "under reporting" my habit and hiding some of my more uncontrolled behavior (online ordering makes late-night force upgrades so easy).

So I got a little queasy when I saw that Forgeworld (Games Workshop's specialty/high-end model shop) has a new book out, Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume One (US$38), on building, painting, and creating terrain for their amazing (and absurdly expensive) models. I still have one of their giant resin-cast models, in a box, in my games closet, just waiting for me to have fifty or so free hours to build and paint it. I could probably use this book to get useful building and finishing tips. Hmm... I wonder if they take PayPal...?

Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume One

I recall being pretty impressed with this augmented reality demo created by Boffswana last November. The basic idea is that you can use a webcam to track the real-world location and rotation of a special printed symbol. With this information, you can overlay a virtual object on top of the video stream and render it to match the position information of the symbol card. Called "augmented reality," the technique gives you a way to interact with digital entities as if they were physical objects.

You can create your own augmented reality programs without having to roll your own tracking code. There's a library called FLARToolKit that takes care of the heavy lifting of symbol recognition and spatial tracking. The code for the Boffswana demo is also available, and you can see how they used FLARToolKit along with Papervision3D to pull their demo off.

I should also mention that the FLARToolKit code could be used for purposes other than augmented reality. I'm sure there are other applications for a webcam-based input mechanism that can deliver accurate 3D location and orientation info.

What would you use this for?

FLARToolKit
FLARToolKit Examples At Tarotaro.org
Boffswana AR Papervision3D Demo and Source

Asteronimo writes about SliceModeler for Sketchup:

Based on TIG's Slicer script I wrote a plugin that slices a solid 3d model along 2 axes, f.i. an X- and a Z-axis. You can enter separate parameters for each axis. After the slices have been created it calculates the slots for each intersection which allow the cross sections to interlock in an open cell framework, like an egg crate. This process is used in rapid prototyping and can be used to create molds for casting or forming parts.

SliceModeler looks like it could be a neat resource. 3D landscapes, making physical models of data and more. Check out his project page for more info.

Slicemodeler is based on the work of John Sharp. You might want to check out this interview. Here are some photos that are also related to John Sharp's work. Sharp has a few books that have inspired these innovative ideas, Sliceforms: Mathematical Models from Paper Sections and Surfaces: Explorations With Sliceforms.

How do you turn your dreams into three dimensional reality? Are there any techniques or tools that your find essential? What inspires you to learn and create? Add your voice to the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the Make Flickr pool.

The folks at Tellart have made an amazing Augmented Reality (AR) holiday card that you can play around with yourself: you'll need Flash player (version 9), a webcam, and a printer (so you can print out the AR objects).

The project was made using FLARToolkit and Papervision 3D. Check out Tellart's site for more details, including a link to the app where you can print out the objects and run the Flash program right on your own computer.

They've also included source code so you can hack this to your heart's content!

Happy Holidays from Tellart

Lisa Laughly, aka Ninth Wave Designs, has done some absolutely stunning Moleskine art projects, including the Alchemy Notebook, seen here. Lisa incorporated her own modified versions of existing rune script, and then further obscured it by using a cipher wheel and grid (also built into the book). So the text has meaning, but good luck teasing it out -- she also changes the rules of encipherment as she goes. The book even has pop-up features. I want to draw like this when I grow up.

Alchemy Notebook: Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook [via BibliOdyssey]

You don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to meditate, or a Sleeping Beauty to sleep well. Achieve these altered states of consciousness, and others, with this simple microcontroller device.

What would happen if you could play a recording of brain waves into someone’s brain? That question popped into my mind one day while I was meditating, and it turns out that there are devices that can do this. Sound and Light Machines (SLMs) produce sound and light pulses at brain wave frequencies, which help people sleep, wake up, meditate, or experience whatever state of consciousness the machine is programmed for. The first time I tried one was a trip! Not only did I follow the sequence into a deep meditation and then out again (feeling wonderful!), but along the way I had beautiful, outrageous hallucinations.

I tried it out and it was very impressed by the speed and accuracy of the motion tracking (he did flicker a bit and have problems when my lights were too bright, so be prepared to work a bit to make him happy). This is a Flash implementation of augmented reality created by Digital Pictures Interactive; all it takes is your web browser, a webcam, and a printed marker symbol. Now, would it kill the little guy to smile every once in a while?!

It seems to be based on the ARToolKit developed by Dr. Hirokazu Kato of the University of Washington.

I enjoy Augmented Reality much more than Virtual Reality because 99% of the AR environment is the real world in all of its infinitely detailed glory and I can accept a few lower fidelity objects overlaid here and there. Even the highest quality VR worlds still feel much less than real in a way that usually pulls me out of the experience.

via BoingBoing Offworld

The earliest elementary zoetrope was created in China around 180 AD by the prolific inventor Ting Huan.

It consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of sequenced drawings or photographs. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits at the pictures on the opposite side of the cylinders' interior.

You should be able to make the Zoetrope from found or recycled parts. If you can't salvage parts like a motor or potentiometer, you local electronics shop should have them in stock.

Finding parts:
Remember all those toys the kids have outgrown, or the VCR your neighbor threw out. They all contain switches, motors and wires. It can be a lot of fun scavenging for parts. Just be careful, things like TV's and computers can have high voltages even when they are unplugged. Only scavenge for parts if you know what you are doing. In general, kids toys that are battery operated are fairly safe to rip apart.

This build is a general guide to making a Zoetrope. Make adjustments depending on what parts you find, or purchase. If you make your own Zoetrope, post it in the MAKE Flickr photo pool and send me an email. Thanks!

Supplies you need:

• (1) Old CD - Think AOL, or any demo disk
• (1) CD spindle case
• Paper - Black & white [you can paint the paper black too!]
• Small Eraser
• (1) Motor - Scavenged from a kids toy
• (1) Switch - Again, scavenged
• Some wire

Tools you need:

• Scissors
• X-Acto knife - Be careful!
• Soldering Iron
• Rosin core solder

Part 1: Finding the parts

The first thing you do is acquire some old or broken electronics to scavenge for parts. You can find a motor in many kids toys. If you don't have kids, or know any kids, then just go to the dollar store and buy something with a small electric motor. Hopefully it will have a few switches and batteries too. I bough a small orange fan for $1, and it didn't work at all. Technically the fan would spin, but there wasn't any air movement. It's a perfect candidate for ripping apart.

Disassemble the fan, or what ever recycled toy you have. A lot of times the screws are hidden under stickers so check there if it doesn't open easily.

When I was done I was able to salvage (2) AA batteries, (1) small light bulb, a nice motor, some wire and a lanyard. I'll keep whatever I don't use for another project.

In my bin-parts I had a battery holder, which was scavenged a long time ago. It holds (4) AA batteries. I thought this would be perfect, but I had to cut it in 1/2 so it held (2) AA batteries.

A quick score with a razor blade, and I could snap it in half.